Thursday, January 3, 2008

New Year...New Start!

Life hasn't stopped my crafting, but it did derail my blogging for a while. Actually, I did manage to keep my other blogs more up-to-date than this one. Check out the activities of my middle school knitting group, Stitch for a Cause. I've been really proud of the girls this year. We just completed a scarf project for our local women's shelter and delivered 110 scarves just before Christmas.

I'm still trying to decide what we'll start with after the holidays. I have a few of them working on squares for blankets and we'll continue that, but I always like to do something fun in the winter to keep the enthusiam up. This year we don't have any boys in the group and in past years I've had as many as half the group made up of boys. That makes me think I need to come up with a guy-challenge this month... One year, we had a "Real Men Knit" challenge with boys knitting against some male teachers (mostly just one) to see who could complete more squares in two weeks. They beat him by one square and were so excited. Since I don't have any guys coming right now, I think I will start with an "Eye Spy" challenge. Any boy I see knitting each day will get entered in a drawing for something cool. Got to work out the details, but that's my idea for now...

Another new crafting endeavor for me was started by "Santa" this year. Santa brought us a hamster for Christmas named Twyla. My daughter adores her and loves to play with her. I have been reading a lot about hamsters on the web and noticed some people have been making little pouches for them. You can put the hamster in the pouch for some lap time or even put them in cages for a sleep bed. Oddly, you can't find these pouches in stores. I'm pretty crafty, so I put my minimal sewing skills to work and came up with my own version of these pouches and have been calling them Hammy Sacks!

I have put a bunch on Etsy and have supplies to make more. I even made a little logo featuring Twyla. I've seen other people expanding the idea to rabbits and ferrets, but right now I'm sticking with hamsters. Hopefully I'll sell a few! If you are interested in one, visit my Esty store. I'm open to custom orders and am posting new sack patterns (for boy and girl hamsters and owners), so hopefully you'll see something you like.